整個學期都在盼望卡爾維諾，明天就要上場。好興奮哦！
五十五個如詩的城市構成一部都市(計畫)史：過往的、彷若現存的、未來的、情感的、渴望的、驚懼的.....光是唸著這五十五個城市的名字都覺得欣喜：
Diomira, Isidora, Zaira, Zora, Maurilia, Dorothea, Anastasia,
Despina, Fedora, Zobeide, Tamara, Zirma, Zoe, Hypatia, Olivia,
Isaura, Zenobia, Armilla, Sophronia, Octavia......
有學生可以把所有城市的名字和屬性背下來...(我們家那個可以一次把圓周率背到一百位而且七年不忘的大麻子可能也做得到。可憐的自閉兒！)這裡頭一定有某一種共通的邏輯，讓某些人用奇特的方式溝通......
這是《馬可波羅遊記》的虛構補遺。怎麼讀都不像小說。就當作是後設讀本好了......
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Kublai asks Marco, “When you return to the West, will you repeat to
your people the same tales you tell me?”
“I speak and speak,” Marco says, “but the listener retains only
the words he is expecting. The description of the world to which
you lend a benevolent ear is one thing; the description that will go
the rounds of the groups of stevedores and gondoliers on the street
outside my house the day of my return is another; and yet another,
that which I might dictate late in life, if I were taken prisoner by
Genoese pirates and put in irons in the same cell with a writer of
adventure stories. It is not the voice that commands the story: it
is the ear.”
“At times I feel your voice is reaching me from far away, while I
am prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of
human society have reached an extreme of their cycle and there is no
imagining what new forms they may assume. And I hear, from your
voice, the invisible reasons which make cities live, through which
perhaps, once dead, they will come to life again.”
Italo Calvino, INVISIBLE CITIES, pp. 135-6
常聽說專攻文學讓人陰鬱，那真是超大的誤會呀！至少，說這話的人並不認識
Italo Calvino!
Yvette 最喜歡卡爾維諾不按排理出牌的「邏輯」。永遠期待他的「頓號」往下連的名詞：正經八百的敘述，卻又是童趣的驚喜。
也許，看完〈城市與符號 1〉之後，台中市台南市台北市的更多符號也都可以讓你入詩。
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Cities and Signs 1
You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye
light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as
the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the
tiger’s passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus
flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and
interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are.
Finally the journey leads to the city of Tamara. You penetrate it
along streets thick with signboards jutting from the walls. The eye
does not see things but images of things that mean other things:
pincers point out the tooth-drawer’s house; a tankard, the tavern;
halberds, the barracks; scales, the grocer’s. Statues and shields
depict lions, dolphins, towers, stars: a sign that something—who
knows what?—has as its sign a lion or a dolphin or a tower or a
star. Other signals warn of what is forbidden in a given place (to
enter the alley with wagons, to urinate behind the kiosk, to fish
with your pole from the bridge) and what is allowed (watering
zebras, playing bowls, burning relatives’ corpses). From the doors
of the temples the gods’ statues are seen, each portrayed with his
attributes—the cornucopia, the hourglass, the medusa—so that he
worshiper can recognize them and address his prayers correctly. If
a building has no signboard or figure, its very form and position it
occupies in the city’s order suffice to indicate its function: the
palace, the prison, the mint, the Pythagorean school, the brothel.
The wares, too, which the vendors display on their stalls are
valuable not in themselves but as signs of other things: the
embroidered headband stands for elegance; the gilded palanquin,
power; the volumes of Averroes, learning; the ankle bracelet,
voluptuousness. Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written
pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her
discourse, and while you believe you are visiting Tamara you are
only recording the names with which she defines herself and all her
parts.
However, the city may really be, beneath this thick coating of
signs, whatever it may contain or conceal, you leave Tamara without
having discovered it. Outside, the land stretches, empty, to the
horizon; the sky opens, with speeding clouds. In the shape that
chance and wind give the clouds, you are already intent on
recognizing figures: a sailing ship, a hand, and elephant….
Italo Calvino, INVISIBLE CITIES, pp. 13-4
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